From Hog Farmer to Shippers Charmer

There’s hardly a job in today’s economy that doesn’t involve a computer in some way. But that doesn’t mean you need a college degree in computer science to launch a successful career--even one that revolves around computers.

Consider Jim Wiebe. He grew up on a hog farm in Nebraska and studied philosophy in college. His first job after graduation was at a Woolworth store in Iowa, where he was a retail manager.

Today, Wiebe runs Systems Design Services Associates, a one-man consulting firm based in Culver City that helps clients make their warehouse and shipping operations more efficient through computerization. Everything he knows about computers he either taught himself or learned through a series of increasingly technical sales jobs.

“I was really adept at figuring out how computers work and how to use them,” Wiebe said. “I was interested in and fascinated by them.”

But Wiebe was never really interested in computers for their own sake. He was interested in the things he could do with them. At home, he used his Apple II--one of the first personal computers--to send electronic mail to his father back in Nebraska. At work, they allow him to do what he really enjoys: analyze the shipping systems that companies employ and find ways to make them more efficient.

“Shipping used to be easy--you throw stuff into a box, throw it into a truck and you’re done,” he said. But in the last couple of years, retailers started requiring that their shipments arrive with bar codes. “Retailers are demanding a level of precision in their shipments that is like rocket science. You need a computer for that.”

So when he was laid off a year and a half ago from a sales job with TanData Corp., a Tandy Corp. subsidiary that makes shipping software, Wiebe decided to start a consulting business. Several of his TanData clients signed up right away, including Howard Wolin, general manager of a garment manufacturing company in Los Angeles.

“He helped us put in the right type of equipment to decrease the time it takes to ship one box. We used to have eight guys who did this, and now we essentially need two,” said Wolin, who added that the workers have been reassigned to other duties in the warehouse.

The system Wiebe designed cut the time it takes to process a box for shipping from five seconds to 2 1/2. Since the company processes and ships more than 3,000 boxes each day to Wal-Mart, J.C. Penney and other customers, that adds up to a savings of about 625 man-hours a week.

Most of Wiebe’s expertise in setting up these systems comes from reading technical manuals, he said. When he needs custom software to connect parts of a system, he calls on freelance programmers to write the necessary codes.

SDS Associates makes a little more money with each passing month, Wiebe said, and his lack of formal training in computers hasn’t hurt him so far. After all, it’s the problem-solving--not the computer skills--that clients really want then they hire his company.

* Karen Kaplan, a freelance writer who covers technology and careers, can be reached by e-mail at karen.kaplan@latimes.com